2011: year-in-review

Editor: Andrew Flegg

Last week's MWKN issue was our second anniversary and, rather than follow the crowd and have annual reviews at the end of the year, we like to do it on our birthday. Not least because of Nokia's habit of breaking big news in the first week of February!

Unfortunately, we missed that deadline, but here's a roundup of the last year:

* February: Elopaclypse - Nokia change strategy, ditching MeeGo; Intel do a "big reveal" of 'the' MeeGo Tablet UX; Myriad's Alien Dalvik VM for running Android app is teased; Necessitas - Qt for Android; Cordia Hildon Desktop started; Valtteri Halla resigns from Nokia and loses seat on MeeGo TSG.

* March: Valtteri Halla joins Intel, no replacement on MeeGo TSG; Nokia N950 leaked; new five-person Maemo Community Council appointed with no election; Digia purchase Nokia's commercial Qt support operations; MeeGo architectural decisions - in no way open.

* April: MeeGo Coding competition launched; MeeGo Tablet UX open-sourced; MeeGo Developer Edition for N900; Nokia & Microsoft finalise contractual arrangements.

* May: Nokia announce layoffs in Symbian & MeeGo; MeeGo Conference in San Francisco - Intel rumoured to ask Nokia to lie low, whisperings about "Meltemi"; Harmattan community - where does it live?; Microsoft to buy Nokia rumours start.

* June: Elop starts reducing expectations around MeeGo in interviews; Asus announce MeeGo netbook; Nokia CTO - Rich Green - leaves; Nokia N9 and N950 announced; Qt (and Linux?) crucuial to Nokia's "next billion" low-end strategy.

* July: Nokia's 9-second N9 adverts - a frenzied hunt for hidden clues; Andrew Olmsted joins MWKN editorial team.

* August: Linux Foundation won't permit apps.meego.com for open source software; Should formeego.org expand to fork the MeeGo *project*, currently non-functional?; MeeGo COBS problems; N9 not to be launched in US, UK or Germany; discussions about the future of maemo.org.

* September: rumours of Intel "pausing" MeeGo work; Gary Birkett passes away; Maemo Community Council only has three candidates - they become Council by default.

* October: More rumours around Meltemi surface; MeeGo abandoned by Intel & Linux Foundation, launch "Tizen" with Samsung; Mer relaunches to continue MeeGo; N9 Developer blog launches; MeeGo Community Edition renames to "Nemo"; Nokia release security update for Maemo 5, coordinated with CSSU team as well; Qt Mobility 1.2 for Maemo 5; Nokia N9 sales success in Finland.

* November: stable release of Community SSU; Intel stop accepting MeeGo apps for their app store.

* December: Qt applications in Apple's App Store.

* January: Fragmentation of Harmattan community; using an N810 as a Skype phone; AppsForMeeGo formally launches for open source Harmattan/MeeGo/Mer apps; Harmattan PR1.2 betas; Harmattan outselling Nokia Windows Phone?; Qt Innovation challenge winners.

It's been a frantic year. There have been personal losses - Gary's death to those who knew him, Nokians who had jobs which were culled after Elop's changes to Nokia's strategy; as well as organisational disasters, such as the death of MeeGo and the irrelevant creation of Tizen.

What will the next year contain? Well, after two years of doing MWKN, which has seen the completion of Maemo, the birth of MeeGo, the launch of Harmattan, the fading of MeeGo and the fundamental shift of Nokia away from producing their own high-end OSes; we couldn't possibly predict.

Maybe in the next year we'll see the first mass-market devices which form part of Nokia's "next billion" strategy. Running Qt, and probably Linux, these could be far more successful than Nokia's Windows Phones - but may not be as attractive to the smartphone loving European & US markets.

Thanks again to Ryan Abel and Andrew Olmsted for their editorial assistance, and all our contributors and supporters.